Thompson pegs the “invisible Canadian road subsidy” at billions of dollars per year, but I see the annual subsidy amounting to thousands of dollars for each car in daily use. With 30 million cars Canada-wide, the hidden subsidy could easily exceed $100 billion yearly.

To discourage car-based living, we need road-usage fees high enough to seriously affect housing demand. Of the pricing systems mentioned by Thompson, the two most viable are road tolls and parking charges. Both would work well if applied everywhere.

A network of licence-plate cameras, covering all roads, would ensure that every trip is metered and billed. Sliding-scale pricing would discourage road abuse by car commuters, thereby tilting housing demand from sprawl to compact urban. And developers would no longer push for sprawl.